TikTok's Rice Waffles Are The Perfect Vehicle For Seafood Leftovers

Though waffles make for a delicious lunch, brunch, or dinner entrée when paired with fried chicken (or even a tasty dessert if you put whipped cream on top), most people consider waffles as a breakfast food. But if you've been on TikTok lately, you'll find that it's also pretty common to use waffle irons to make all sorts of non-breakfast foods that resemble waffles only in shape. As it turns out, the same appliance that's responsible for the breakfast classic can also be used to make grilled cheese, hash browns, and even keto-friendly fried zucchini.

The reason waffle irons are versatile enough to handle so many different recipes is simply that except for the grid pattern, they function almost exactly the same way as a countertop grill or panini press, by heating food from both sides. And since it doesn't have to just be waffle batter that goes inside, TikTokers have now discovered that all it takes to make a simplified version of the crispy rice called nurungji is to put rice in a waffle maker.

Making the rice waffle itself is pretty self-explanatory, given that it technically only requires one ingredient to make rice. Many TikTokers however also suggest mixing sushi vinegar and sesame oil into the rice before pressing it into the iron. This should help with the browning and crispness, add some extra flavor, and make it easier to remove your finished waffle from the iron.

While cornbread and buttermilk waffles are best enjoyed with a drizzle of maple syrup or other sweet toppings like fruit and powdered sugar, rice waffles — at least according to TikTok — are more savory, and are best enjoyed with seafood. Most recipes shared on the app use some combination of poke tuna, salmon, and imitation crab, but you can theoretically use any type of seafood you'd normally put in sushi. And because rice waffles are, well, waffle-sized, there's a good amount of space to play around with in case you really want to load it up with toppings.

If you're familiar with Japanese or Korean cuisine, chances are TikTok's rice waffles look familiar to you. Without the waffle marks, they're essentially nurungji, a Korean snack made by scorching rice in a pot. In Japanese cuisine, the same dish exists but is called okoge, however, crispy rice sushi is perhaps even more common. Popularized by the famous Japanese restaurant Nobu, the modern sushi variety consists of a block of rice fried to a crisp and topped with sushi-grade fish.

Whether you want to call it nurungji, okoge, or crispy rice, the cooking process is practically the same. The rice gets crispy due to prolonged heat, and technically, that doesn't require a pan of oil. The average waffle maker heats to about 375 degrees Fahrenheit, or up to 425 degrees Fahrenheit if it's a cast iron waffle maker. This means that cooking crispy rice in a waffle iron isn't much different from cooking it on the stove, making it easy and convenient to enjoy a sushi-like seafood dish in a pinch.